So since I last posted about the joys and ultimate instability of the @font-face CSS property I’ve been keeping both eyes peeled for any further progress from the incredibly smart people who solve these kinds of problems.
Up until now a viable way of embedding attractive typefaces in web pages has been elusive. SIFR, cufon and other replacement techniques gave us designers a hope and a glimmer of what could be but they also gave us our fair share of stress and frustration.
So what has changed? Recently? Quite a lot actually, I was first alerted to something possibly big coming down the pipeline when the FontFont foundry (one of the biggest and most popular type houses around) changed their eula to allow certain types of embedding. Now these changes still don’t allow web embedding via @font-face but they had effectively acknowledged SIFR (but not cufon) and similar techniques and deemed them legal. Why they only just changed is beyond me, given the age of SIFR and related techniques. A few more questions – Seeing how SIFR has only just been effectively legalised by them, does that mean using FontFont fonts in SIFR has been illegal thus far? If so what have been the consequences? Has there been any high profile legal action against web sites using FontFont’s fonts via SIFR? As you can see the change created as many questions as it did answers.
What this change in eula did show, however, was that embedding fonts was being looked at closely and would be addressed sooner rather than later. Despite being frustrating to not have a direct answer to @font-face related queries this change gave a hint that something more to come.
WOFF is a font format that has now been given full backing by FontFont and a whole host of other type houses. It’s also gained traction with the W3C, Firefox (from 3.6) and many more influential figures. FontFont’s marketing director Ivo Gabrowitsch on the subject - “FontShop International—home of the world’s largest collection of original, contemporary typefaces, the FontFont Library—supports WOFF, since users, designers, and foundries all need a Web fonts format.”. So it does look as though a realistic solution for all is just around the corner.
Basically WOFF isn’t an entirely new font format rather it’s a wrapper for the existing open font type that allows greater compression (good for embedding) and more importantly; allows font creators to add additional meta data to the existing font properties. WOFF can therefore be set to only allow embedding on one domain and isn’t as easy to download and use as a system font, which is the problem of the currently completely open @font-face specification.
The final plan looks to be for font foundries to distribute web only versions of their fonts maybe at a reduced price for web use only.
There has been no word yet of implementation for web-kit and other rendering engines but with so may pros it must only be a matter of time before other browser vendors grab a hold of this and run with it. Take a look at the mozzila blog post on woff for a more in-depth explanation. This really could be the breakthrough that designers have been begging for for years.
There’s an answer for that also. Just before the news of WOFF started to sweep the web I came across an amazing tool from Font Squirrel, which will no doubt become as useful as any other online tool or application I use on a daily basis. The @font-face generator can take any font file and return a kit ready for embedding that is supported on every browser your likely to be testing on. In my last post about @font-face I complained about the impossibility of creating .eot files to serve to Internet Explorer but this generator completely eradicates the problem. Of course the same licensing issues apply to any font face you send through the generator but with so many free fonts available this tool gives designers a fantastic amount of freedom. The generator also includes a .woff file with every kit but at the moment I’m guessing its pretty much the same as the True or Open type font file.
If you haven’t already I strongly suggest you get over to Font Squirrel and see what they have to offer. Also take a look at their pre-packaged @font-face kits.
Things are definitely looking up for font embedding, since my last post a mere two months ago we now have a solution to get @font-face running cross-browser, albeit still without commercial fonts and a embedding solution in the works that should allow designers to buy and embed commercial fonts to there hearts content.
As I was writing this article the thought of font as service providers popped into my head. I think it’s safe to say with the future looking so bright for embedding and a usable alternative to font as service offerings available right now the future looks rather bleek for the like of Typekit and co. Assuming they have deals in place with font foundries already and get off the ground, I can’t see people going through the pain of using their application when they can go straight to the type foundries themselves and effectively cut out the dependency ona middleman out.
It just goes to show how quick things can change online. My guess is font as service providers are quite worried about recent developments and could well be buried by technology advances if they can’t change there plan around quick enough.
